Buffy's Adventures Through The Windshield Glass
by I Am The Prince of Wales
Summary: Buffy is hurled headfirst into a strange new world... one surprisingly rich in seafood.
1. Chapter 1

**TITLE:** Through the Windshield Glass and What Buffy Found There

**DISCLAIMER:** Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Joss Whedon, Amen.

**SETTING:** Set between the Sixth and Seventh Seasons.

**RATING:** Call it a hard T.

**Part One: **Lost in the Supermarket

"Thanks for taking care of this, Xander," Buffy said gratefully (if a little embarrassed.)

"Hey, no problem," Xander smiled. "I can't have you and Dawnie starving... you're the only two women left in my life who've never tried to kill me."

Buffy raised a guilty eyebrow.

"Well, there was that one time when you hit me with the frying pan," he admitted. "But you were temporarily insane, so... let's call it a freebie."

Buffy smiled slightly and nodded.

It was amazing how foreign the local grocery store was to Buffy, most likely due the relative infrequency of violent demonic activity there... coupled the fact that first her mother then Willow had tended to do most of the cooking. Oh, Buffy could bring home take-out with the best of them, but when actually called upon remember what she and Dawn actually consumed over the course of the week, she was somewhat baffled.

She was also somewhat broke, which was another reason she was glad to have a friend like Xander.

"The point _is_," Xander continued, "after all the non-injuring things you've done for me, I have no problem buying you some groceries until you find a new job."

"Preferably one that doesn't fire you for consistently not showing up," Buffy quipped darkly.

"Or leaving in the middle of your shift," Xander chimed in.

"Or having a history of violence," Buffy concluded, smiling. "Anyway, I promise that I'll keep it with reason. I will purchase nothing unless it is 100 percent essential... ooh, TaB!"

Xander shook his head in disgust. "Buf, don't you know how many lab rats that stuff killed?"

"After the thrilling series of violent deaths I've had, Xander, I'd welcome a quiet, lab ratty death," Buffy replied calmly. "Besides, maybe they were evil lab rats."

Xander shrugged. "I don't know, if I was going to pick a drink to kill me, I'd rather have something bolder and more masculine... like a fierce home-brewed moonshine... or a quirky Vodka-spiked Tang."

"So, my corpse will be skinnier," Buffy raised an eyebrow.

"Also prettier," Xander granted. "Of course, living in Sunnydale has made me deeply afraid of the idea of leaving a beautiful corpse, but... Hey, could you grab me some fabric softener?"

Buffy eyed him quizzically. He really had made progress over the last few years.

As Buffy reached for the fabric softener, she found herself being dragged forward by an invisible force. To struggle was useless, she found, and within mere seconds she was being pulled another frame of existence. Buffy tried her best to be amazed by the experience, but it just wasn't happening. After all, she reflected, this sort of thing was fairly common in LA.

When she landed with a thump, her primary emotion was mild annoyance.

Buffy quickly took note of her surroundings: the room was cold, incredibly dark, and the walls and ceiling appeared to be made entirely of metal. For a moment of abject terror, she considered the possibility that she hadn't been dragged into another dimension at all and she'd actually fallen into the store's freezer section.

"God, that would be embarrassing," she said aloud.

Buffy could sense movement within the pitch black and, as her enhanced Slayer vision began to adjust, she was able to make the rough sketch of her fellow occupant: twenty feet tall, forty foot wide, covered in heavy armor, and sporting a nasty-looking set of pincers.

"Great," Buffy snarked. "Giant crab enemy."

She approached the massive creature, very aware that she was unarmed, but that never stopped her before... only to be somewhat surprised to see it scuttle away from her in abject terror.

Buffy cocked her head in confusion. "You get the part where you're the size of a post office and I'm barely five feet tall... right?"

The crab apparently didn't, as it continued to cower as Buffy got closer.

"Leave that crab alone," a voice from behind her called. "He's just minding his business trying to be a crab."

Buffy turned to face a pale, pasty, out-of-shape, middle-aged man with a bow-tie and small, round glasses. He was completely nondescript, which in Buffy's world invariably meant dangerous.

"I'm sorry," Buffy snapped back. "But generally when someone hurls me into another dimension, it means they're looking for a fight. I guess I'm letting my past experiences color my judgment. I'm sorry if I was being prejudiced."

"Oh, it's all right," the normal man replied, missing the sarcasm. "You're actually right to think that because there is a fight coming... But not from him," the man explained, gesturing to the crab.

"In fact," the man said thoughtfully, "I think he'd like to help you along."

"Right," Buffy quipped. "Because a having a giant crab following me around isn't going to make things difficult at all."

However, when she looked back at the crab, it seemed small enough to fit in the palm of her hand.

The average man scooped the crab up and offered it to her. "Keep him well-fed and he won't bite," he confided. "He should come in useful later."

Buffy tucked the crab silently into the pocket of her denim jacket. Stranger things had happened to her lately, so she had no real reason to be shocked. "Who are you, anyway?" she asked. "Whistler's brother or something?"

"I'm just a friend," the average man answered cheerfully.

"My friends tend not to speak in clichés," she replied, which was a half-truth at best, but didn't need to know that.

"Oh, not yours," he corrected. "The crab's."

Buffy nodded, that made much more sense.

"Now," the unremarkable man told her as he ushered her on her way. "Remember where your strengths lie, don't lose track of what matters, and, when the time comes... **follow the dog**."

Buffy cocked an indignant eyebrow, wondering if this was supposed to be some kind of rude metaphor. Before she could ask, however, she was shoved forth into the light, emerging from a previously-unseen wormhole in the Häagen-Dazs rack.

"Hey Buffy, what do you think," Xander asked, holding two bottles aloft. "'Bold' or 'All'? Because I could actually go either way at this point in life..."

------

"So, you slip in the supermarket, fall into the basement, and some weird guy gives you crabs?" Xander asked, trying to divide his attention equally between driving and playing sidekick.

"There was only the one crab, but... yeah, basically," Buffy admitted.

"And he's sure this crab will be rich in usefulness despite the fact that it's now essentially just a thorny spider," Xander continued.

"Without any of the nifty web-slinging," Buffy sighed.

"I don't know, Buf..." Xander shrugged. "Seems kinda lightweight for you."

Buffy smiled and shook her head, glad to have things put back into perspective. "You know, I really don't know what I'd do without you, Xander."

Xander was feeling good; better than he had in months. Sure, he'd destroyed the best relationship of his life and his oldest friend had nearly murdered the entire species... but as long as he was alive and well and he had a friend like Buffy, he knew life could only get better for him.

It was less than ten seconds later his car slammed into the rail.

The Dog... a mastiff of so biggly huge that Xander couldn't help but feel somewhat inadequate by comparison, came running across the street... Xander was forced to swerve to avoid slamming into it. As Buffy flew through the windshield, she couldn't help but reflect on how useful those lessons about proper seat-belt use really were.

She only wished she'd paid more attention.


	2. Advice From A Turtle

**Part Two:** Advice From A Turtle

Xander regained consciousness and immediately panicked when he realized Buffy wasn't next to him.

He had been doing that nearly every morning for the last seven years, so hhe was on familiar ground, but this time the panic had the added advantage of being justified.

"Buffy!" he called out, darting his head madly around. "Buffy!"

Slayer strength and Slayer healing were one thing, but flying out a car at that speed could do serious damage, even to her.

"Buffy!"

He stumbled about the area, ignoring the decidedly more stumbly and limpy method of walking he seemed to have picked up after the impact. There was no sign of Buffy, which was odd in itself. His contractor-senses told him that this sort of accident left plenty of debris, and while he failed Physics, he'd seen enough people get thrown across rooms (and had it done enough to himself) to understand the basics of trajectory...

But aside from the Buffyhole in his windshield, there was absolutely no trace of the pretty blonde killing machine. It was like she'd smashed through the glass and came out in another dimension.

"I know _so many_ parallel dimension people," Xander mused, wondering idly if he might have a concussion, "but not one of them is returning my calls right now. Typical."

It was then that Xander's body decided to inform him of the full extent of his injuries and he collapsed by the side of the road.

-----

Previous experience told Buffy that she could not breath water, which made it something of a mystery when she realized she'd been floating face-down for what must have been hours (at least, if the wrinklies on her fingers were an accurate measuring stick.)

Maybe she was finally building up a tolerance after the previous drownings. That would certainly remove some of the complications from her life.

"Can't swim to well, can you?" she heard a voice ask with doddering hostility.

Buffy pulled her head out of the water to regard her companion, and was less surprised than she would have hoped to realize that it was a turtle of some kind.

"I try to stay out of the water," Buffy answered crisply. "I kind of have issues with it."

"You won't do very well around here, then," the Turtle dismissed.

The lake she had been floating in was far larger than she would have imagined was possible to store indoors; and the more she thought about, the more convinced she became that there were no two-tone brown tiled underground stadium-sized domes in Sunnydale... or if there were, she hadn't noticed before.

"Thanks for the tip, Creepy Talking Turtle," Buffy replied, splooshing her way towards the brick ledge of shore. "And why is everyone always British?"

"You don't like it?" the Turtle asked, raising a turtly eyelid.

Buffy shrugged. "I have complicated feelings about it."

The Turtles tsk'ed. "Won't do very well around here, then."

"Okay, I now know that I won't do well here," Buffy cut through. "Can we focus on where _here_ is now?"

"Grenell," the Turtle said as though that explained everything.

"Okay, great," Buffy replied, accepting that she simply wasn't going to do any better. "And should I be all Dorothy about this and focus on getting home or is this like 'Labyrinth' and I'm expected to cause some kind of major social revolution while I'm here?"

The Turtle narrowed its eyes at her. "You'll find I know very little about your movies," the Turtle explained, "I'm a Turtle, you see."

"Fine, you're a Turtle," Buffy agreed, beginning to feel her temper rising. "I'm a Slayer. Does that mean anything to you?"

The Turtle thought about it long and hard, but finally decided "not as such, no."

Buffy really hated it when they missed the threat. "It involves a good deal of stabbing," Buffy supplied helpfully.

"Oh," the Turtle shrugged. It was a deeply bizarre motion and was fairly certain she'd never be able to diagram it accurately. "I suppose you'll be wanting the Donikas Blade then."

Buffy still had no idea where she was or how she got there, but if her past had anything to teach her, it was that if a book or a weapon or a piece of Kung Pao chicken had a _name,_ that meant that it was important and it should belong to her. "Absolutely," she nodded, smiling broadly. "Take me to it."

The Turtle looked at her blankly. "'Take you to...' Do you usually order people you don't know around like that?"

"Generally, yeah..." Buffy admitted sheepishly.

"Won't do very well around here with that kind of attitude," the Turtle dismissed.

Buffy sighed in exasperation. "I'll find it myself."

"See that you do," the Turtle grumbled, clearly eager to get back to being a turtle.

Buffy took a moment to examine the vast, checkerboard alcove. There seemed to be thousands upon thousands of tunnels and sub-tunnels, fully half of which you'd have to be some kind of turtle to get through. "Any idea which way I should go?"

The Turtle shot her a dirty look, which (again) was fairly difficult to explain to anyone who hadn't seen it.

"Okay," Buffy raised her hands in defeat. "Just forget I even asked."

The Turtle gave her an angry nod.

Buffy fished the crab out of her pocket and, after making sure that it was unharmed, took a moment to confer. "Any of these tunnels look good to you, Mr. Pinchy?"

The crab looked at her with understandable confusion.

"Right," Buffy agreed, "I'll just pick one," she said, finally choosing a tunnel that seemed promising in that looked exactly like every other tunnel.


	3. He Hates Roses

Part Three: He Hates Roses

"I guess this dimension's not all bad," Buffy conceded as she continued to wander down the tunnel. "I mean, sure I'm up to my hips in water... but at least it's clean water for once, and I kinda like all these seahorses," she remarked, noting the vast numbers of the creatures swimming around her.

"Oh, and we like you too, dear," a nearby seahorse concurred in a strangely matronly tone. "You're simply lovely."

"Um, thank," Buffy said. "Hey, do you know the way out of this universe... or possibly where to find the Sword of Dentifrice?"

"Can't say as I have," the seahorse admitted. "We live a quiet life here in this tunnel," she explained in her antique-shop-owner-quaint tone, "we're born in here, find a male here, get him pregnant here, and raise a school of children here."

"Sounds nice," Buffy offered.

"Oh, it's lovely," the seahorse replied. "Mind you, you have to watch out for the Griffox."

Buffy raised an eyebrow. "Griffox?"

"Oh, it's a horrible creature," the seahorse said, wringing her tail and wrinkling her snout in distaste. "Lingers about in the dark, not at all sociable... does simply _dreadful _things to young girls like you."

"Great," Buffy sighed, seemed like it was about time for her to fight some unknowable horror. "How do I fight this thing? What do you really know about it?"

But the seahorse didn't answer, she was too busy disciplining one of her children for trying to swim up Buffy's pantleg. "Now, Timothy, I told you not to behave like that. This nice young lady deserves her privacy and there youare, swimming at her like that..." the mother seahorse looked back up at her. "Terribly sorry about this, dear."

Buffy shrugged. "Happens all the time. Now, about this Griffox."

"Oh, you don't want to might him, ghastly fellow," the mother seahorse dismissed. "Why don't you come inside. I'll make you some tea."

Buffy smiled politely. "You know, I'd really like to, but I've been in this dimension almost an hour and nothing's tried to kill me yet, so..."

The seahorse took this with polite good-humor. "Well, perhaps if you survive, we'll have tea later."

"Absolutely," Buffy agreed.

-----

Once again, Xander Harris found himself cursing the immortal gods of irony. He had finally found himself in Buffy's house with the exact kind of injuries that lent themselves to be waited on hand and foot, and Buffy was in a whole other dimension.

Worse still, with Giles and Willow unavailable and Anya refusing to answer his calls, it was falling on him and Dawn to find Buffy and bring her back. He couldn't even take the time to acknowledge the pain, he told himself, he had to quietly soldier on.

Of course, he was monumentally bad at soldiering on, quietly or otherwise.

"Xander, would you stop whining for one minute?" Dawn hissed in utter exasperation. "This book reads like an SAT prepbook _and_ it's in Mongolian, so I _really_ need to concentrate."

Xander knew she was right, Dawn and her amazing knack for learning foreign languages by mail was there only hope of finding Buffy. But knowing that didn't change the fact that he felt like his arm had been driven through his spleen.

He let out another scream, wondering once again why his role in the battle against the dark forces had to be "collateral damage."

------

After nearly an hour of splushing through the tunnel, Buffy could tell she was getting close to the Griffox. All the seahorses had vanished some time ago, the lights (which Buffy could find no source for, but which seemed oddly flourescent) had begun to flicker on and off, and there was a consistent, sound of otherworldly howling floating horribly through the air, so it was more than a little obvious. "Gee, some people never get sick of cliches," Buffy thought out loud.

Then, slowly, but deliberately, the dark, lumbering form of Griffox began moving towards her, swinging his ancient, rusted chain slowly.

"Look," Buffy broke in, "I'm sure you're very scary and everything... the seahorses are sure scared of you... but I don't really have time for this right now. I've kind of got another dimension to be in," she confided.

The Griffox kept nearing closer and closer. His kunai clinking menacingly against its chain.

"Fine," Buffy sighed, "I was hoping to save us both a little time and effort, but..."

The Griffox growled in undisguised aggression and poised itself to strike...

...Only to have Buffy knock his head off with her bare hands.

"And now I can sleep easy, knowing I saved an entire nation of English seahorses," Buffy remarked.

And with that, she kept right on walking, further into the belly of the whale.


End file.
